Summer is almost here and that means HURRICANE SEASON in Florida! Get your home and your garage doors outfitted with hurricane protection kits today. Call 866-420-DOOR or visit DGDoors.com to view Discount Garage Doors list of services and garage doors that can be installed to improve the look of your home. And remember, Discount Garage Doors offers FREE service calls. Don’t wait – call today!

Mention PewterReport.com and SAVE 10% OFF your order or service call at Discount Garage Doors!

SR’s Fab 5 is a collection of inside scoop, analysis and insight from yours truly, PewterReport.com publisher and Bucs beat writer Scott Reynolds. Here are a few things that caught my attention this week at One Buc Place and around the NFL.

FAB 1. Inside The Bucs’ Drafting Of Vea

Tampa Bay’s selection of defensive tackle Vita Vea with its first-round pick didn’t happen on the night of April 26. It happened a couple of years ago.

Knowing that the Bucs needed a speedy weapon at wide receiver capable of making plays for Dirk Koetter’s offense and a stud cornerback to pair with Brent Grimes for Mike Smith’s defense, general manager Jason Licht headed out to the University of Washington during the 2016 college football season to scout wide receiver John Ross and cornerback Sidney Jones among other talented Huskies – including Vea, who was a sophomore defensive lineman.

“You see a 350-pound guy that is sometimes playing in an outside linebacker role coming off the edge, and you knew how athletic he was,” Licht said. “We marveled at him. Our scouts, Tony Kinkela and Andy Speyer, but particularly Tony, who lived up in that area, would talk about him a lot. I remember that year I went out there with Tony and Andy at a school call and I came back and talked to Dirk [Koetter].

“I said, ‘Wait until this big guy comes out of Washington.’ He talks to Coach Pete (Huskies coach Chris Peterson) quite a bit and he came back to my office and said that he said nothing but great things about him. We’ve been on Vea for a while.”

When Licht walked into the meeting room for an exclusive interview the PewterReport.com staff he offered up some insight into one of the best drafts he has been a part of – and what could go down as a franchise-changing draft for the Bucs in terms of getting this team over the hump and into the playoffs.

Licht didn’t reveal his draft board to me, but reading between the lines based on our conversation I would guess it went like this:

That’s important to know because the Bucs were prepared to take Vea, who I believe was their fourth-rated player on their board with the seventh overall pick, which would have been really good value. When Cleveland surprised many by passing over Chubb and taking Ohio State cornerback Denzel Ward – a move that didn’t catch the Bucs off guard due to intel they had gleaned the day before the draft – Tampa Bay’s front office knew two things.

First, there was a chance that a member of the Top 3 on their board – likely Nelson – could fall to them at No. 7 where he would have been the Bucs’ selection. And second, it all but assured Tampa Bay would at least have its choice of either Vea or James at No. 7 if Chubb and Nelson went to Denver and Indianapolis, respectively, which is what happened.

Bucs DT Vita Vea and GM Jason Licht – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Days before the draft, the Bucs had prepared to stay at No. 7 and pick the 6-foot-4, 347-pound Vea, believing that he – and James, too – had Pro Bowl-caliber talent. But one of the scenarios that Licht and his scouts had mock drafted was a trade down to No. 12 with Buffalo, who desperately wanted to draft a quarterback, and did with Wyoming’s Josh Allen at No. 7.

What prompted the Bucs’ decision to move down was the work done by director of player personnel John Spytek, director of college scouting Mike Biehl, director of pro scouting Rob McCartney and the team’s scouting staff. A lot of intel gathering had to be done in order to move down to No. 12 and ensure that Tampa Bay would at get Vea or James.

“That was a lot of fun,” Licht said. “I knew that there was a chance that Vea was going to go Miami. I had some intel that Washington wasn’t going to trade up to get him, though. I wasn’t worried because once Arizona made the trade up – and we had feeling that’s what they were going to do – that would push both Vea and Derwin James into that next spot. We knew we were going to get one or the other. To me that was worth picking up the two second-round picks and risking it – even though we wanted Vea.

“Once Minkah went [to Miami] we got our guy. It just happened to work out that way. I thought about trading back up [ahead of Miami] from 12 to go get him, but I resisted. I was going to want that fourth-round pick. I didn’t want to have to give up a No. 2 and get back a four.”

The Bucs traded the No. 7 overall pick and a seventh-rounder to Buffalo for the No. 12 overall pick and two second-rounders (No. 53 and No. 56 overall) to give Tampa Bay three second-round picks. Licht traded down again with New England in the second to pick up an extra fourth-round pick, and would use one of those two fourth-rounders – along with one of the team’s two sixth-round picks – to move up into the third round to draft offensive lineman Alex Cappa.

Scott Reynolds and Bucs GM Jason Licht – Photo by: Mark Cook/PR

Licht told me that this is the best scouting staff he’s ever worked with. It took a couple of years to get the right scouts in place, but he marveled at the job his team did in helping him turn seven initial draft picks – with only three in the top 100 – into eight selections through three trades, which netted the Bucs a total of five picks inside the top 100 when all was said and done.

“I thought this was the smoothest draft that I have ever been a part of in terms of our preparation for every scenario – one of them coming to fruition with the trade back from No. 7 to 12,” Licht said. “We were ready for it and it didn’t surprise us. That was one we were ready for.”

So how did Licht know that Miami would pass on Vea in favor of Fitzpatrick? Scouting intel.

“That’s where Rob McCartney is an encyclopedia,” Licht said. “He’s extremely sharp and intelligent. I can just turn to him – we have a room with a big board for every team, who’s next and what their team needs are – and ask him anything about teams. As the picks came in we were right and were just crossing them off just in succession based on what he and Shane Scanell and Alex Smith had done with Jon Spytek overseeing it.

“I could just turn to him and say, ‘Hey, what is San Diego going to do?’ And he would say, ‘They’re going to take one of these three guys,’ and boom – they did.”

Bucs 2018 scouting staff – Photo by: Jason Licht

McCartney, Scannell and Smith are the Bucs’ pro scouts, but that’s where they come into play during the NFL Draft. Their knowledge of all 31 other NFL teams’ rosters and draft needs is quite valuable when Licht is looking to do some draft day maneuvering.

Everyone in the Bucs’ front office had a role to play during the draft and the selection of Vea – even director of football administration Mike Greenberg, who serves as Licht’s right-hand man and the team’s salary cap wizard. Typically, Greenberg comes into play during undrafted free agency immediately following the draft, but that changed this year.

“Mike lets me know what we’re going to have for undrafted free agency because every team has a cap number to use on your undrafted free agents and rookies,” Licht said. “He’ll say, ‘Do you really want this guy?’ He tells me what the options are to go get him and still stay under the rookie pool, which is by guaranteeing paragraph five (the base salary in NFL player contracts). A significant amount of their paragraph – let’s say you can guarantee a guy a $20,000 bonus and guarantee $80,000 of his salary. If he gets cut and makes your practice squad he’s going to make that anyway. If he goes and makes somebody else’s practice squad it’s offset.

“There are – I don’t want to say loopholes … ways of still getting the guys we want. Greenberg has a great way of reading my mind. He’ll look at me and he’ll say, ‘You want this guy over that guy, right?’ He’s just invaluable on a number of fronts.”

But Greenberg, who has one of the brightest front office minds in the league, actually played his role in the selection of Vea before the draft.

“We ended up getting a seventh-round compensatory pick from last year – no big deal,” Licht said. “I like having a pick. It’s fun drafting a player. Last year around this time we were signing a player. We were about to sign him and Greenberg came into my office and said, ‘Hey, if you wait two days to sign him he won’t count against the compensatory formula as a free agent. There’s a certain point where they are UFAs up to a certain date, and then you hit another date and they are no longer considered UFAs. They are just street free agents [and don’t count against the compensatory formula].

“That particular free agent wasn’t necessarily guaranteed to make the team, so I didn’t think much of it, but Greenberg suggested that we send him home and bring him back on Monday to sign the contract. He ended up making our team, and if we had signed him two days earlier we wouldn’t have gotten the seventh-round pick. Without the seventh, we might not have gotten the deal done with Buffalo. I probably would have gotten the deal done somehow, but as it turned out, Buffalo wanted the seventh involved in our trade. After I did the deal I looked at Greenberg immediately and said, ‘You got us those two second-round picks! That’s where you’re earning your paycheck!’”

Vea’s selection by Licht was years in the making. Tampa Bay’s G.M. had made some improvements to the defensive line over the last two years – adding defensive ends Robert Ayers, Jr. and Noah Spence in 2016 and defensive tackles Chris Baker and Stevie Tu’ikolovatu – but it wasn’t enough.

Bucs GM Jason Licht – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

Even during the Bucs’ playoff chase in 2016 when the team had the No. 1 ranked third down defense, Licht saw that the defensive line wasn’t stout enough against the run. So he added two bigger bodies in the 320-pound Baker and the 330-pound Tu’ikolovatu, but Baker wound up being a bust and Tu’ikolovatu spent his rookie season on injured reserve.

Watching the Bucs defensive line last year was a weekly travesty, perhaps scarring Licht. The unit couldn’t rush the passer all season nor could it stop the run consistently, and Licht was left to curse to himself regularly watching helplessly from his suite. He knew he hadn’t done enough to improve the defensive line, but that was going to change.

Last year’s tortuous 5-11 season prompted Licht to cut Baker and Ayers, and sign run stuffers in tackles Beau Allen and Mitch Unrein along with defensive end Vinny Curry, in addition to trading for pass-rushing defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul. But he wasn’t done there. For added depth and to ensure longevity at the defensive tackle position Licht coveted the massive Vea, whom he had first scouted two years ago.

“Last year, watching the games from the booth one of the things that I wasn’t really happy with from the first snap of the play when we were on defense was not being able to control the line of scrimmage,” Licht said. “Actually, I was pissed. You could see that on both sides of the ball. The one thought that never left my mind was that we have to beat [other teams] up. We have to dominate. We have to impose our will. I didn’t see that enough.

“It wasn’t a coaching thing and I’m not blaming any players in particular. I blame myself. I thought to myself, ‘It’s time. It’s time to bring the guys in that will do that.’ It’s an attitude thing and it’s also a talent thing. We had Vita graded higher than Derwin in terms of being a football player, and we liked Derwin a lot. It might have been just slightly ahead, but once we set that board, I’m going to stay true to that board. So he was the guy. Now would we have been happy with Derwin? Hell yeah we would, but we were happy to do what we did, grab the extra picks that helped us fill other needs, and still get the guy we ranked higher.”

Washington DT Vita Vea – Photo by: Getty Images

Last year’s performance by the defensive line shell-shocked Licht to a degree. He didn’t just want to add a couple of players as he did over the last two years in an attempt to upgrade it. Licht wanted to totally remake the line and change the attitude.

Licht wanted toughness and vigor.

He wanted high-effort relentlessness.

He wanted physical, dominating players.

He wanted ass-kickers.

Licht wanted Vea, and got him two years later – and five picks later at No. 12 than he originally thought he would at No. 7, picking up quite a haul of draft picks in the process.

About the author

Scott Reynolds is in his 23rd year of covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the vice president, publisher and senior Bucs beat writer for PewterReport.com. Author of the popular SR's Fab 5 column on Fridays, Reynolds oversees web development and forges marketing partnerships for PewterReport.com in addition to his editorial duties. A graduate of Kansas State University in 1995, Reynolds enjoys giving back to the community as the defensive line coach for his sons' Pop Warner team, the South Pasco Predators. Reynolds can be reached at: [email protected]

21 Comments

Great work on the Fab 5, Scott… and yes, Mark, Trev and the crew do a great job keeping all of us “football geniuses” well informed throughout the year and I certainly appreciate it. I think that the talent level is not longer the question. It’s there. The questions that I have now are… Is Koetter the coach to take this team to the next level and is Smitty’s scheme going to work now that we have the talent in place? Oh, on a side note; I’m noticing that the PR website is freezing as I scroll to the bottom of the pages?

e, I can give you a possible reason why that is happening. My internet security has blocked 143 data collection attempts via this website after being on it for 25 min. This site and one of my e-mail accounts get the most blocked data information attempts. We all know about tracking so I’ll leave that up to you…

First, gotta give credit to Pewter Report for the great scoops leading up to the draft. I feel like PR readers are more informed than 99% of all other fans because of the great work you guys do. So many hits across the mock drafts and Best Bets. Kudos.

That said, that was quite the puff piece for Vea. I have all the hope that he succeeds, but forgive me for being skeptical that a guy who had 3.5 sacks his senior year at college can be a viable NFL pass rusher. If he cant, then this is a blown pick. His career will always be compared to Derwin James’s for me. Only time will tell if Licht made the correct pick.

This tells you who the educated fans are versus the uneducated fans. If you think Vea getting 3.5 sacks is going to decide whether this is a blown pick or not, you really need to take up a different sport as a hobby. Because that’s so far from the reason they drafted him it’s not even funny. There’s so much more that goes into it. If the Bucs didn’t have McCoy, yeah I’d agree that maybe 12 is a little too high for Vea. But his job is not to get sacks. His job is to completely shut down the run and demand double teams so that McCoy( who’s never in his life seen a one on one), and JPP, can can get freed up to get to the QB. It’s as simple as that. His job as a freak athlete of his size is to stop the run, get push up the middle, and let McCoy and JPP wreak havoc. Just by the teams DLine roster alone, it was the perfect pick. Anyone that knows anything about football knows this was a brilliant pick. Who made that Ravens Defense so good for years? It wasn’t Suggs, and it certainly wasn’t Reed, it was Ngata. His presence freed the rest of the DLine up. Anyone that says the Bucs should have drafted James is delusional

I believe with Benenochs athleticism he should be able to unseat Sweezy. He has very good movement for a guy his size and he should excel in our zone scheme. Hopefully this 3rd year is the year he finally puts it all together.

Great draft coverage guys! I razzed ya about the James and no trade back predictions only because I didnt agree. You guys got me turned onto Cappa and Watson well before the draft. And others like Nathan Shepherd who Ive become a big fan of. I thought Licht had a great draft. Ive been calling for him to trade back more and luckily it worked out perfectly this year. Go Bucs

Licht and Co should be applauded for acquiring the draft picks they did given what the team started started the draft with. If you rate a DT and a SS the same, you take the DT every time. NFL games aren’t won by the teams with the best safety play but largely on who can control the line, as the 5-11 Bucs can attest to.

Unfortunately the decision to sign DeSean Jackson to the 11mil/yr deal ended up costing the team a 3rd round compensatory pick as it offset much of the 16 mil that Mike Glennon received from the Bears. At the time the draft hadn’t occurred and receiver was a weakness, but with Evans, Brate, Howard, Humphreys and Godwin, Jackson ended doing more harm in costing the team a high compensatory pick, cap room that could have rolled over and blocking playing time for Godwin than any good it did.

One of the most overrated things I’ve ever heard is when a GM crows about the value they received in the draft relative to their board. In 2016 Licht proclaimed that VHIII, Spence and Aguayo were all 1st round graded players on their board. At the time Scott crowed about the Bucs acquiring that much perceived talent. The problem is, they have to play football first before you hand the GM and scouts any awards. It’s like choosing to go to a restaurant that you rate really highly only to get food poisoning. Just because you thought it would be good doesn’t mean that it won’t end up going through you in a hurry. The hope is they’ve learned something and can keep some of the momentum from last years draft going.

Good Fab 5 Scott; you did a good job defending the pitch Licht gave as to that line of draft logic. I still say we are short 1 or 2 DE’s for our pass rush. I didn’t see the need for a DT when DE was still a priority, but I understand the logic behind it. When we traded down to 12th spot, I was hoping we were going to trade down again as I still saw the need for DE.
My other comment is about Swizzy and his health issues; might be time to bite the bullet and move on and use the savings to sign Smith & Alexander. I got it Jackson, Humphries, Conte, Gholston, Fitzpatrick cap space will be used to sign Winston to a new contract.

Enjoyed the article Scott. It always amazes me how wrong I’ve been over the years when trying to construct my war room and plan my strategy for the draft. I aways find out after the fact that what I am thinking and what the Buc’s are thinking couldn’t be farther apart. The problem is I get most of my analysis from outside sources like ESPN, NFL.com, DRAFTEK, etc. Hence when one of your mocks come out i don’t recognize half the selection you project. Since the draft however I have researched the picks and now I see why we would take a Vea over a Fitzpatrick or why If Nelson was not available we would not drop to James if Vea was still on board. I had no idea we have been Following this kid for 2 years. For most of us fans it’s smoke and mirrors, but every year I dive back in and every year I walk away scratching my mead. One side bar if I may, what is the physical condition of Tu’ikolovatu? Can you imagine a goal line stand with Vea and him crowding the middle?

Another site quoted Licht as saying Cappa would start out playing right tackle, who’s right? I think his body type, long, and leaner then most guards would make him a better tackle prospect. It’s great to have position versatility if you’re drafting a player to be a back up along the line but, I believe if you need to find a starting right tackle, draft a player who’s been there done that well at a high level during his college career. Nobody was clamoring over Q. Nelson for his ability to play any position on the line. I also don’t know why Licht likes to get to cute drafting players from small schools, I think he got lucky with Marpet who should be a pro bowl R.G. by now instead of moving to a new spot every year. I watch alot of SEC games so it’s hard for me to believe there wasn’t a better option then Cappa.

Really enjoyed the inside scoop about Jason Licht’s Draft process Scott. That’s why we come to this site. I learned a long time ago that what the “experts” say isn’t necessarily what the teams think and certainly not gospel. Looking forward to Training Camp and getting Pinkstob’s take.

Excluding the RB and Guard, my board lined up with the Bucs board. Chubb, Vea, James. I would have been happy with any of them at 7 but Im overjoyed about getting Vea at 12 along with the two additional 2nd round picks.

When we are contending for a Superbowl in a few years we will look back at this draft as the reason for our success. Vea is going to make the entire front 7 better.